BBC Radio 4 „Great Lives“: Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking

„The best-sell­ing author of How to Train Your Drag­on, Cres­si­da Cow­ell, explains her love for the Swedish author, Astrid Lind­gren. Born in 1907, Lind­gren invent­ed the Pip­pi Long­stock­ing sto­ries to tell to her chil­dren dur­ing the war years, only writ­ing them down for a pub­lish­er years lat­er.
Fol­low­ing the immense suc­cess of Pip­pi, Astrid Lind­gren went on to write Emil of Lon­neber­ga, Chil­dren of Noisy Vil­lage and the fan­ta­sy nov­els Mio, my son; Ronia the Robber’s Daugh­ter; and The Brother’s Lion­heart. But it was Pip­pi who brought her fame and for­tune. She was a par­tic­u­lar hit in post-war Ger­many, where it is claimed the sto­ries helped de-naz­i­fy the Hitler youth.
In the 70s and 80s Lind­gren began cam­paign­ing on child, envi­ron­men­tal and ani­mal rights, influ­enc­ing Swedish gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and becom­ing known as the ‚Grand­moth­er of all Swe­den‘. She is still very much adored there today.
Cres­si­da Cow­ell is a recent children’s lau­re­ate. Also join­ing the dis­cus­sion is Johan Palm­berg, Lindgren’s great grand­son, who recalls: „She had this under­stand­ing of what a child might be inter­est­ed in … she would be the first one to climb the trees and have the chil­dren fol­low her up“.“ (BBC)

Sie kön­nen die Sendung, die am 23.9.2022 in der Rei­he „Great Lives“ lief, über die Seite der BBC nach­hören oder als Audio­datei herun­ter­laden.